Take a look at this Office Web Viewer (details in the post copied below). I have been playing about with it bit. It looks very nice indeed - beautiful, simple, clean and powerful interface (i.e., the functionality it provides) in the Metro style.Interaction seemed a bit slow on the connection I was using, so maybe there were a lot of IP node hops going on; not sure.I couldn't get it to work in Firefox (probably too many things being blocked by my add-ons), but it worked fine in IE10.Well worth a look though.The implications seem to include that Microsoft may have just (rather belatedly) leapfrogged Google big time with this - Google having previously stolen a march on MS with their proprietary Google Docs document formats for some MS documents, and their now ubiquitous Google Docs Viewer for documents/files on the web.It will be interesting to see how this develops.(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

Do you have Office documents on your website or blog that you want your readers to view even if they don't have Office installed? Would you rather view a document before downloading it? To give your audience a better experience, try the Office Web Viewer.What is the Office Web Viewer?It's a service that creates Office Web Viewer links. Office Web Viewer links open Word, PowerPoint or Excel files in the browser that would otherwise be downloaded. You can easily turn a download link into an Office Web Viewer link to use in your website or blog (e.g., recipes, photo slide show, a menu, or a budget template).

Some benefits of the Office Web Viewer include:

You don't need to convert Office files for the web (e.g., PDF, HTML).

Anyone can view Office files from your website or blog, even if they don't have Office.

It keeps eyes on your website or blog, because readers don't need to download the file and they stay in the browser.

One link will work for computers, tablets, and mobile phones.

How to get startedTo use Office Web Viewer, click this link: http://officewebviewer.com [Link not working or "service" discontinued?]Then copy and paste the document's URL in the text box. It looks like this:(Image)

Note: the <Document Location> needs to be URL encoded, and the document must be publicly accessible on the internet.

Here are a few examples of documents in the Office Web Viewer:

At the Microsoft Build conference there were a lot of presentations with PowerPoint decks. If you want to watch a video of one of the presentations, you can also look at the PowerPoint deck that goes with it using the Office Web Viewer. http://view.officeap...OOL-532T_Sutter.pptx

On a popular banking site we found this great Wedding Budget Planner spreadsheet. To preview the spreadsheet instead of downloading it, we created an Office Web Viewer link. http://view.officeap...ner_Spreadsheet.xlsx

Here's a school newsletter template we found on Bing. With the Office Web Viewer, you don't have to worry about everyone at the school being able to view a Word document--now all they need is a browser. http://view.officeap...le%2Bnewsletter.docx

If your document is an Office document and is publicly accessible on the internet, then you are good to go. Office Web Viewer links are a great alternative to download links because your readers don't need a special program to view your documents, and they don't have the interruption of leaving their browser.

If you view the documents above and the interface controls, then you will see that they provide the HTML code that you need to embed those same documents in your website. Looks pretty straightforward.

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